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Obama Praises Amazon At One of Its Controversial Warehouses
theodp writes "In his first term, President Obama was a big booster of indie bookstores. But on Tuesday, the President chose to deliver his speech on Jobs for the Middle Class at one of Amazon's controversial fulfillment centers in Chattanooga, TN. 'Amazon is a great example of what's possible,' said Obama, who also toured the 'amazing facility' where workers can make $10.50-$11.50 an hour as an employee of Integrity Staffing Group, 'may also be eligible for medical and dental benefits', and 'must be able to stand/walk for up to 10-12 hours' in temperatures that 'will occasionally exceed 90 degrees.' So, are '21st century migrant workers' the new middle class?"
-Obama, overlord of Earth.
So he likes to shop at indie book stores with his daughter, and somehow this makes him a hypocrite by giving a speech at an amazon warehouse? The speech itself wasn't really about books anyway:
In his speech, Obama outlines the areas he believes the country needs to focus on "if we want to create good jobs that pay good wages in durable industries." Among these priorities, listed in order of mention, are: manufacturing and high-tech jobs, infrastructure jobs, and clean energy jobs
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
I'm seriously failing to see what about these jobs makes them "controversial." The pay and working conditions seem to be completely in line with the type of work it entails. It's certainly better than minimum wage or a true "factory" job (in terms of safety).
Keep up the selfishness... Keep buying the cheapest crap from the cheapest place possible, without regard for where you're spending your money, and this is what you get. After all, there's "free shipping", right?
Welcome to the another manifestation of the culture of "I've got mine. Fuck you."
I don't respond to AC's.
Thank God for that. Imagine having a society have to pay for one of these disposable workers to recover from a sick day!
well it is the Amazon duh
The Middle-Class is being redefined as people who can afford basic necessities like food, shelter, clothing and medicine. Want money to enjoy life beyond that? Tough luck!
When did ~$24k gross a year become middle class? Did I miss a memo or have I been living in fantasy land? (11.50 per hour * 40 hours per week * 52 weeks)
He's like all politicians, just a Corporatist who happens to have either a "D" or "R" after his name.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
There is no Middle Class anymore. Since the Middle Class stopped wearing suits and settled for business casual, everybody became Blue Collar.
The idea of Middle Class has changed through history. Originally it was applied to factory owners, who came between the "landed gentry" and the plebeians.
Funny how hard it is to live on one of these 'good, high wage jobs'. Working in tech obviously I'm used to high compensation for my time, but I've done military, machining, making packaging for frozen dinners, etc etc. It's funny how the more physically demanding the job is the harder they want you to work to have to joy of keeping your job while at the same time paying you 1/4th what you make with a desk job. There is a skill difference in the work obviously but I don't think anyone should go home after a 40+ hr week with too little money to live. You can get by on 11 in the burbs but what if your job is in the city? Somehow Starbucks employees are just supposed to "get by". Getting by usually means 25+ year olds still living with their parents because their full time job isn't enough to be able to afford a place of their own.
Funny how Walmart offered suggestions on budgeting recently that excluded the cost of heating (don't remember if transportation was on there or not, but heck bus both ways to a 5 day a week job will probably run you $80 a month at least so you'd be working for your first day and a half of the month just to get to work).
It must be a cold day in Hades.
Relentless war which the globalist elites are waging against any possible middle class opposition - CHECK.
Utter hypocrisy of moving employees off-book, into sub-contractor scams, where hours are guaranteed to be less than 30-per-week so as not to qualify for Obamacare - CHECK.
Big-$$$ campaign contributions and other goodies being laundered from Bezos through Gorelick and into the Chicago Machine - CHECK.
Hypocrisy of Martha's Vineyard vacationing politician, who otherwise would love him some indie bookstores, heading to the mother of all vertical bidnesses for a little facetime on the evening newz - CHECK.
What's next, an honest discussion of why Fuckerberg and Ballzmer and L-Word-ison really want all those H1B aliens?
Might be a good day to go long on some snowball contracts in Hell.
While the pay might be middling, Amazon warehouse jobs are full time jobs with benefits, including paid leave (and health care, if you have to see a doctor on your sick day).
I sold dew worms to fishermen for a year to buy my first computer
And now you can't even buy a cup of coffee with what you'd get from doing that.
Everybody wants it all but doesn't want to work for it. Guess what? It doesn't work that way
You're right, the people who have it all don't work for it, they've already got it and now they spend their days on the golf course making the hard decisions of which division to amputate in order to make this quarter's numbers look good enough for a bonus.
They're temp workers without benefits, working 12 hour days, and get fired if they make any mistakes or say the wrong thing. Length of employment and available work is not guaranteed, but when there's work you're working overtime. Workers are searched off clock when entering the building, during break, and when they leave. You can't bring anything with you as the shipping center ships everything so how do they know if you're stealing it?
These are shitty, high stress jobs for people near the end of their ropes.
$10.50-$11.50 per hour works out to be around $21k-$24k a year on average, given a full 40-hour work-week. That's hardly middle class. It's actually much closer to the Census Bureau's defined poverty threshold. If the worker is the head of a traditional 4-person family, it actually puts him/her at or below the poverty line.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
You have to work hard.
If working hard was all it took their would be far fewer people complaining.
soylentnews.org
...is not middle fucking class.
worldmobilenet.com -- World Prepaid Wireless Internet plans
These are shitty, high stress jobs for people near the end of their ropes.
Ah, so these are the new middle class American jobs!
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
As long as temperatures don't exceed 451 degrees, they should be fine
Too bad they're not Amazon warehouse jobs, they're Integrity Staffing jobs.
What are you talking about?
They're decent, honest jobs that pay a fair wage.
That's about as middle class as it gets.
Ummm, no. Physical working conditions are certainly great, but Amazon fulfillment warehouses are notoriously known for driving workers into a state of constant terror due to managerial abuse. A middle class job used to imply a sort of shielding from such things (not totally but certainly more than what you would see and still see at a minimum wage fast food joint.)
Middle class doesn't imply that anymore. And $10-$12 an hour is $24K. That is not below what is typically considered a low-end middle class salary. $24K was middle class twenty years ago. Not anymore. They are just above the limit that forces people to use social services.
I'm not saying these jobs are decent or honest (and thank God they are not Walmart salaries.) Any job with salaries above the poverty line is better than no job or poverty-line job, anytime, any day. And I'm not saying that for the type of job being performed, these are not fair wages. They are.
But let us not call them middle class wages. They are not. The rising cost of living, education and health care, and the continuous shift towards replacing full-time workers with part-time workers (or contractors) have pretty much made sure a $12/h job is not a middle class job anymore.
I don't see anything controversial about the warehouse. It's hot (or cold) unskilled manual labor. It pays above minimum wage, but like most jobs with unskilled labor, pays no benefits. They do not do so because it would not provide them with any competitive advantage vs. other fulfillment companies.
Breaking the "race to the bottom" to make sure you won't starve to death and have access to things like basic medical care when you are a productive member of society (fulfilling your end of the "social contract") is arguably a useful thing for government to do.
Plain and simple: Obama is turning America into a third world nation.
Don't give him too much credit - he has plenty of help.
You are correct; $11.50 an hour is not middle-class. However, that no-benefit salary is usually enough to make you ineligible for things like Medicaid (even though you aren't buying jack-$hit in medical care on that paycheck) or a Public Defender if you are accused of a crime.
It's a tragedy that a productive member of society that is fulfilling his/her end of the "social contract" still cannot obtain the things we would expect every civilized nation to make sure it's citizens have access to.
... is praising a very conservative employer. Why are we surprised by this? Obama has done more for the conservative movement than Reagan ever could have dreamed of. He gives lots of lip service to raising minimum wage, reducing tax burden on the lowest income brackets, making health care and education more accessible, etc; but his actions counter those promises. He has cut taxes more than Reagan, he has reduced government more than Reagan, we have seen union membership continue to plummet even more quickly than it did under Reagan, and we have seen college tuition rise even more than it did under Reagan. On top of all that minimum wage hasn't increased anywhere near as much as inflation, while employers have continued to amass more power over their employees.
I don't know why anyone is surprised to see Obama praising the Amazon warehouse. It cuts jobs and neglects the value of employees; those are classic conservative values. And don't try to claim that the massive health insurance industry bailout act (aka "ObamaCare") is somehow not a conservative act; Reagan would have crapped himself with excitement over signing a bill into law that forces average Americans to become consumers of for-profit businesses.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
middling: moderate or average in size
thats minimum wage where i live. if you dont make 20 or more, you are no where near average.
Not sure what the minimum wage at the unnamed place you live at has to do with Chattanooga.
http://livingwage.mit.edu/places/4706514000
In late August 2008, Then Senator Obama gave a little speech in a airline maintenance hanger in Kansas City. He complained about the Republicans and how much ground the middle class had lost, about healthcare. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xauuo1CvexE Listening to it now it still echos of somebody who didn't have ideas then and certainly has no ideas now. What's ironic about his middle class speech there is that American Airlines closed down that maintenance facility in 2010.. http://www.dallasnews.com/business/headlines/20100924-American-Airlines-closes-former-TWA-base-878.ece
Sounds like the same schtick over and over again.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
this, right here.
Amazon is contracting these jobs out so they are distanced from the managerial abuses, lack of benefits, instability, and poor working conditions.
AND THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES HOLDS THIS UP AS A PARAGON TO BE EMULATED.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
You don't understand. It's easier to make up a new definition to fit the conditions than it is to have the conditions fit the current definition.
The chocolate ration is increasing to 30 grams!
It's a useful baseline as the term middle class has been distorted to the point where it has no meaning whatsoever anymore.
If you are working for all of your money, you simply aren't middle class and weren't ever really. That's just a lie that people in power like to tell to keep the huddling masses from getting discontent.
If people realized they were really part of the underclass they might be more inclined to act out or just differently.
A lot of higher paid wage slaves have themselves convinced that they are something different than people that fill Amazon orders and that's not really the case.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I can see taking exception to the pay. It is valid to have the position that we should be more socialist, that people in lower skill jobs should make more. Not everyone will agree, of course, but it is a valid position to have and to argue. However this concept that there is something bad about having to stand and move all day for work, or that it won't be in a climate controlled office. Oh give me a break.
It is just part of this bias that Mike Rowe calls a "war on work" as though only jobs sitting at a desk are real jobs. That if you are out doing any sort of physical work, then your job sucks and you should aspire to something better. No, actually, it is perfectly valid to work like that and you can be quite happy. One thing I'll say for sure is it helps keep you in better shape when you are active like that. I was a surveyor's assistant for a while, which meant working outside doing physical things. Man was I in good shape. I felt good too, had more energy than I do now where I sit at a desk all day. This is not to say I hate my desk job, I love doing computer support, but I am realistic about the benefits I got from being active all day.
So ya, I don't see what is wrong with these Amazon warehouse jobs, other than perhaps the pay. Trying to make it seem bad because people are standing and moving just smacks of laziness. "Oh those poor people, they have to actually use their bodies, which is actually healthier! Whatever will they do!"
If Amazon treats them well and their workplace is safe, then what is to complain about, environment wise?
These are shitty, high stress jobs for people near the end of their ropes.
Ah, so these are the new middle class American jobs!
Exactly. This is the new reality. What we used to call "working class" is being re-defined as "middle class", and the new American Dream is "just getting by."
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
i guess he is really just another fucking republican after all. corporations are people and people are nothing.
The issue with Amazon is while they offer great service and the lowest prices, they are forcing not only other businesses to go under but also dictating the prices of goods in the market. Many companies have a Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) policy in order to keep an even playing field for their resellers. Amazon is so large, and buys so much, that do not obey to MAP policies - they do what they please. If the manufacturer doesn't like this, they can choose not sell to Amazon and subsequently lose sales in the millions of dollars.
In the wake of low prices and convenience, we are seeing the extinction of a free-enterprise market and the transition of skilled laborers to box-stuffers....all run by the efficiency of a computer system.
There was a time in the US when the "working class" actually banded together for higher wages and benefits. There was a time when Americans cared enough about the future of their children to take the necessary steps to guarantee them a better future, whether they were garbage collectors or brain surgeons. The lessons learned from the affects of Robber Baron Capitalism and The Great Depression have been utterly lost. Utterly Lost.
What has happened is(for lack of a better term, and a nod to Queensryche's 1988 masterwork, "Operation Mindcrime") that the 1% that rule America discovered how to "divide and conquer", as if that tactic hasn't been used countless times through history with the same results. Since the 1980s(yea, you've heard this before) the 1% have successfully rolled back the social safety nets, which in the past were mainly affecting the poor. Now the middle class is sliding down into poverty.
This is no "market adjustment" or "realignment of labor forces". This is nothing less that a concerted and tightly executed plan to turn the US into a third world country, where the vast majority of the population is poor, marginalized and has little or no political or economic power, where a small elite controls all facets of society.
The lessons learned from the affects of Robber Baron Capitalism and The Great Depression have been utterly lost. Utterly Lost...
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
The jobs described sound like most entry-level labor-class jobs - whether it's a framer, and landscaper, a farm worker, feed store employee, or any other manual job which requires very little training. Those never were middle class jobs, and neither is a warehouse job.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Here in Europe, many people look upon Obama as the biggest US-caused / US-related disappointment in more than a century.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
You retrain that person for something more in demand. Of course, this requires your welfare system to not suck, and to include an educational component (Denmark has free university, and also has free continuing education to retrain unemployed workers).
The U.S. could do it better, if anything, since it has some economies of scale. The main advantage being small gives Denmark isn't efficiency, but social cohesion to allow it to set up such a system in the first place: people actually feel responsible for the progress of the country, not just getting themselves rich.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
This is a very good definition, but unfortunately (at least where I live), many people simply make the choice not to be middle class in favor of lifestyle.
Now, I'm in a reasonably well off "economic bubble" city, so take what I have to say with a grain of salt, but....
Many of the people I work around have 2400+ sq foot houses, 2 expensive (40K+) cars, re-modelled kitchens, multiple cell phone plans (at $80+ a pop), gadgets galore, all brand-name clothing, take 1-2 out of country vacations per year, and some even own vacation property.
Yet they live in debt.
They allow their money to actively work against them, which astonishes me.
Why are people constantly lined up a starbucks to pay $5+ for a cup of coffee? Are name-brand clothes so much better than Wal-Mart that they are worth 3-4x the price? Do they really need a data plan on your cell phone for $80 a month? etc. etc. etc.
As much as we like to blame: the president, the government, big banks, wall street, global economy, immigration policies, etc for the current financial situation, at least where I am, I see the biggest issue being: people themselves.
... given a full 40-hour work-week ...
Except that with a job like that, they're probably not only paying low wages but also employing the people part-time so the company need not pay benefits of any kind. So the person maybe is only working 25-30hrs per week, and then they have to go get a second job of the same kind. Nice, huh?
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
I feel like a dumbass for buying his bullshit during the elections (I didn't vote for him, but he seemed like a decent guy). I thought Cheney was a straight thinking, honest guy in 2000, too (didn't vote for that pair either).
There should be criminal penalties for lying politicians.
First of all.... the conservative movement of the Reagan era is LONG gone. I think that's worth noting, because America was in a much different place in the 80's than it is today, but also because practically everyone running as a "Republican" today has values very far from what Reagan did.
If you simply want to do a quick "once over" of how the Obama and Reagan presidency differed, you only have to look at the economic picture. The U.S. was prospering under Reagan's administration. College tuition might have risen under Reagan, but so did people's ability to pay it, by and large. Obama has done practically nothing to "reduce government" that I'm aware of, either? Please cite these claims! If anything, he's consistently maintained practically all of the additional government baggage the Bush administration brought about (and which MANY people think needs to go!). TSA, Homeland Security ... these things didn't even exist in the Reagan days.
As far as this specific article? I'm not particularly surprised to see Obama praising an Amazon fulfillment warehouse. I simply agree that it's an "interesting" choice for a speech about middle class jobs. I have no problem with Amazon, and would probably agree with Obama that the company as a whole is an example of a U.S. tech success story. But certainly, the temporary, low paid labor positions the warehouses create aren't doing much to improve the nation's economic situation.
Overall, I'm very much in agreement that Obama has done an awful lot of maintaining policies and govt. programs put in place his Republican predecessor. But his predecessor wasn't following in Reagan's footsteps. (In fact, going back as far as Bush, Sr.'s presidency -- I remember reading an anecdote about Reagan feeling the man wasn't even fit to shake his hand at the inauguration, and didn't want to attend the White House dinner for him either. He only did all of that because it was expected of him as a tradition.)
I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave: My brief, backbreaking, rage-inducing, low-paying, dildo-packing time inside the online-shipping machine.
"... when you're late or sick you miss the opportunity to maximize your overtime pay. And working more than eight hours is mandatory. Stretching is also mandatory, since you will either be standing still at a conveyor line for most of your minimum 10-hour shift or walking on concrete or metal stairs."
"The gal conducting our training reminds us again that we cannot miss any days our first week. There are NO exceptions to this policy. She says to take Brian, for example, who's here with us in training today. Brian already went through this training, but then during his first week his lady had a baby, so he missed a day and he had to be fired."
It's 4 pages. Take the time to read it. It's depressing as fuck. I buy very little from Amazon anymore, and when I do, it's usually from individual sellers, not "Amazon" itself.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
40 years of productivity gains
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
How about instead of criticizing a company for creating all these jobs, innovating an entire new industry, producing incredible value for customers, and instead praise them for doing so?
Working for low wages sucks. I know plenty of people who do this. Often they are recent immigrants or children of recent immigrants. Both parents may need to work. Grandmother may need to live with them and do child care. Their kids might not have their own bedrooms.
But having wages of this level means they can have a (used) car, refrigerator, microwave, TV, running water and a flush toilet - things they may not have had if they were unable to come to the US. So they are happy about that. But life is still challenging, though they get by and have a life as enjoyable as anyone else (I know unhappy rich people and happy poor people).
Low wages are an important price signal. It says perhaps you should finish high school, or go to college like 66% of high school graduates, or go to a trade school, or become an entrepreneur and start your own business (I know a Central American immigrant who started as a maid, saved up money, and now owns a chain of restaurants). Or perhaps you should move to areas with higher wages, like the Bakken or Eagle Shale areas.
Don't be like Washington DC and destroy thousands of potential jobs by saying Walmart should pay higher wages than the minimum wage. Don't force people to be unemployed.
If you really want to help these people, first let them have jobs (i.e. at the market wage) rather than try to manipulate their wages and making them unemployed. Give them a chance to make some money now. Then they may figure out they need to save to get more skills, move, stay in place and learn how to move into management, etc.
Then ask yourself why our unionized socialized government monopoly schools might not be preparing everyone for high-skill, high-productivity jobs.
That mit site is ridiculous. Where can you get an apartment in Boston for $1000 that isn't an unfinished studio in a basement?
What they call a living wage is actually poverty level, or below...
Idiot. Get your ignorant head out of your uninformed ass. Democrats and Republicans are both owned by big business. You're as bad as the watchers of Fox News who get riled up over the "evil democrats" and have never bothered to look in the mirror. There NO DIFFERENCE between these parties and you're a chump to fall for their finger-pointing.
Is it fair? No. Life isn't fair.
That was my attitude until the last few years. After '08 financial crisis, read about the top 1%, the ecnomy improving yet hiring was stagnant, the board members of investment firms getting off scott free & blaming lower level execs for breaking the law, increadible mis-management and wheel sleeping morons at the SEC, the American prison population quadrupling over the last 10 years, the whole-sale gutting of the right of habeas corpus, and the complete lack of caring or understanding of the removal of the many fundamental constitutional rights here, I am of a mind that its beyond "not fair", but the game is rigged and not rigged for me or you. And you'd be a fool to think otherwise.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
In my benighted Red 19th-century state, the Kochs are running TV ads refuting the 1% / 99% argument, reassuring the working poor that they indeed are well-off and middle class. Pay no mind to your paycheck-to-paycheck, one middling medical issue away from oblivion, dear serfs!
Exerable assholes highly deserving of dying in a fire.
This is the best analogy you've heard??
In the US there are 14 cans of beans. And 15 people. (unemployment rate of ~7.5%) 14 people each get a can of beans, they are allowed to eat only 70% of the can and have to give 30% to the government. The government spends their 30% making sure that their hill of beans is protected from outside forces, that their supply of beans is secure and stable, that the 15 people have access to medical coverage, clean water, sewage systems, etc. The 15th person has access to the infrastructure the government purchased with the 30% of the other 14 people, and is given food stamps to get some beans of his own.
The 15th person complains he is poor. The other 14 people complain about government waste and how the government should be doing more for the 15th person (without raising their taxes). Meanwhile in other countries without free markets and social programs there is one can of beans and 10 people...
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.